Happy Endings
by Rainstorm Amaya Arianrhod
Summary: Tillira will get her happy ending by chance. After all, that's how fairytales go, isn't it?


**A/N:** A twentyyears challenge. Please **_read and review!_**

**Disclaimer:** Nothing belongs to me but the themes, challenge and Tillira. Please go to the LJ comm 20yearsinalife for more details of the challenge. New members welcomed.

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Themes 3: The Fairytale Set  
  
**0- wrap up warm**

Tillira was born the youngest child of a loving family; six brothers, and then Tillira, a daughter, born on the shortest day of the year. They lived in Belisaere, inside the safe aqueduct border, in a pretty little square with a garden in the centre where the Dead, the haunts and the ghlims, never came. On the day that Tillira was born, her parents took her to a priest, and she received the baptismal Charter mark. Although nothing special happened to mark the occasion- just the usual ritual –there were people present, passers-by only, who were inclined to embroider it with wondrous occurrences because of what Tillira became. Tillira herself was to always deny the stories that she'd been surrounded by a mysterious golden light, that a comet had lit up the sky, that the Dead hadn't dared to stir that night; because although Tillira became something quite extraordinary, she was born just the same as every other child; because no matter what we do, at some deep level, we remain the same as everyone else.

**5- faith hope charity and then some**

By the time Tillira was five, everyone called her Lira; her six brothers, her mother and father, aunts and uncles, friends, cousins all. She was a bright child, and good with Charter magic –the few small spells she'd been taught by her brothers and parents. She was kind, in that way some children are, and thoughtful. She was also something of a tomboy, as much as any girl with six brothers would be; she liked running around, getting mucky, a little freedom to run wild with and emulate her brothers. But she never failed to get home before sundown: one of the things the boys had impressed on her, with many terrifying and much-exaggerated stories of the Dead. Simon, the fourth brother, said this was an act of charity to his sister: if she never went out after dark or into the dangerous area unprotected by aqueducts because the stories had scared her off it, she'd never be attacked by the Dead. He almost got away with it.

**10- provide me a happy ending if you will**

The year Tillira was ten was a bad year for the families around the square she lived in. Some of the boys, including Tillira's own brother Jakin, emboldened by the lack of Dead attacks in recent years, chose to creep into the area unbounded by the aqueducts- the place where few dared to walk in twilight and darkness, because of the Dead that came down from the hills, and the broken Stones, of which rumour only whispered. The Palace and its gardens alone remained safe, guarded by the efforts of Abhorsens past, and even then sometimes a lone haunt might creep through a guard worn down to the last layers of Charter marks to prey on whomsoever it could catch until an Abhorsen dispatched it swiftly to the Ninth Gate. Jakin and his friends, passing the city's guards undetected, who would have turned them back, slipped into an even more dangerous part of that frightening part of the city. Eight of them left the little square in the safe part of Belisaere, and only four returned, running all the way back, sundown hard on their heels. Jakin was one, sobbing and terrified. Tillira's father was furious; he threw things and shouted, but hadn't the heart to punish his son, who had already seen four friends die at the decaying hands of the Dead. Tillira's mother simply wept her fear away, holding her youngest son so tightly Tillira, observing, thought she would never let go. Quietly, Tillira left the scene, to sit in the tiny room at the top of the house that was hers. She opened the shutters, and looked out at the night sky as the first stars appeared, and wondered, what had it been like for Jakin? To know that evening approached, and with it even more danger than he had experienced before then? To run for his life? She was so curious, she wanted to know the answer so badly, that she asked Jakin, who entered the room pale-faced and red-eyed, saying that Father had told him to apologise to everyone for causing such worry. And he answered: "Terrible, Lira. I don't know where I found the strength to run." That was when Tillira guessed that night would soon fall over Belisaere: not literal night, a dark star-studded blanket of rest, but the kind of night that falls when little hope is to be seen, although she wouldn't have said it in so many words; it was more a feeling. Because, thanks to her brothers' ghost stories, she knew the Abhorsen only could defeat a plague of Dead such as her city suffered from, and she wondered where Belisaere's happy ending would come from. That night, she had nightmares.

**15- call me a fool but I love you**

When she left school, aged fifteen and a competent Charter Mage, Tillira chose to become a Royal Guard; not for the regent, but for the city, foolish a choice as this might be. To perhaps win Belisaere a little more time before night fell- like the memory of Jakin's race through twilight, which stayed with him forever, Tillira's ten-year-old fairy-tale parallel of Belisaere remained lurking uncomfortably at the back of her mind. She told none of this to her parents, of course, who were upset by Tillira's choice. She wasn't the first of her family to choose so: Simon had too, and he had died between Tillira's thirteenth birthday and her fourteenth, aged seventeen, but Tillira generally knew what she wanted and got it. So she joined the Royal Guard, spent an uncomfortable two months in Basic Training, and started guarding. Slowly, however, numbers of the Dead were rising, and so were the numbers of casualties. Tillira hadn't yet been in a full pitched battle against the Dead, like some of her comrades, but she was a listener –it came from having six loud-voiced brothers- and the horror stories she heard from them convinced her of two things: one, that her brothers hadn't exaggerated their Dead-stories, and two, that Belisaere's metaphorical nightfall approached.

**20- the path chooses the willing walker**

Twenty was the year Tillira left the Royal Guard- or perhaps closer to twenty-one? –for a reason she refused to tell, even to Corporal Fiama, who was Tillira's who kept the letters Tillira had written to her family in case, one day, she made a mistake which turned out to be her last mistake. Fiama also had permission to call her Lira, although Tillira had abandoned the childish nickname the day she joined up with the Guard, and in return Tillira was permitted to call her Fia. It's funny how close friends swap nicknames, but not deepest secrets- or perhaps Fiama guessed. After all, she had been present when Tillira had met her reason for leaving the Guard. It had been in a pitched battle three days before her twentieth birthday, and it was the reason Tillira rose to command her squad. The previous commander had gone the way of all flesh and died, and at the time Tillira thought she was going to die too. It had been her third proper fight with the Dead- at a hole in the warding –and her squad had gone to the aid of the patrolling squad, who, according to a terrified sergeant who hadn't been a sergeant five minutes ago, were 'in _real_ deep, Miss- Sergeant- Ma'am', and he'd been right. There were many more Dead than even the slightly pessimistic Tillira had expected, and the combined squads were struggling just to hold the gap, let alone rout the Dead. For the first time in an admittedly short career, Tillira found herself wondering whether she would come out alive. When a series of smaller Dead managed to take down and kill one of her squad, allowing larger Dead an opening where it would be easier to burst through and escape into the city, killing people and getting stronger. And at the moment, Tillira thought distractedly as she chopped the legs, arms and head off a Dead thing with sword strokes that would have made her Regimental Sergeant Major weep and send her running round the barracks fifteen times, they were far too strong anyway. However, it was some time after Tillira had made these comments to herself that she'd actually met the person who was responsible for her leaving her job and her family- because hearing bells, and seeing a sword and the soft gold glow of Charter spells just as you were about to pass out didn't really count as a first meeting, did it? As a first meeting, Tillira thought that waking up in your bed in your barracks dorm with the handsome man in the chair in the corner of your room who had just rescued you and what proportion of your squad hadn't died prior to that from certain death and probably fixed your wounds up too and happened to be the legendary Abhorsen and while we're on the subject of why this is odd, he's apparently waiting patiently for you to wake up, and then introducing himself as 'Terciel, please don't call me Abhorsen, I haven't been it for very long' had a lot to be said for it. The words to be said for it were mostly ones that Tillira had learnt from her older brothers in moments of stress. Because it couldn't be denied that Tillira found him attractive- extremely attractive –and it couldn't be denied that she'd never met anyone like him. She even found the courage to tell him about her little fairytale metaphor for the sorry mess Belisaere was in. He even found the courage to tell her about how he hated being looked at as an answer to every problem. And they understood each other, and Terciel stayed in Belisaere on the premise of doing something about the fragile wards, and that was why Tillira was preparing to leave her job and her life. Because –all right, out with it!- she had fallen in love. If that's not a happy ending, what is?


End file.
